Cory Doctorow

It has the minimum calculated to keep us there.

And this equilibrium is what Facebook wants, but it's very brittle because the difference between I hate Facebook and I can't seem to stop coming here and I hate Facebook and I'm never coming back.

it can be disrupted by something as simple as a live stream mass shooting.

And then users bull for the exits.

The street gets nervous.

The stock price starts to wobble.

The founders panic, although being technical people, they call it pivoting.

And, you know, one day Mark Zuckerberg like arises from his sarcophagus and says, hearken unto me, brothers and sisters, for I've had a vision.

I know I told you that the future would consist of arguing with your most racist uncle using this primitive text interface that I invented so I could non-consensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergraduates.

But actually, I'm going to transform you and everyone you love into a legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon character so that I can imprison you in a virtual world I stole from a 25-year-old comedic, dystopian, cyberpunk novel that I call the Metaverse.

And that's the final stage.

That's the giant pile of shit.

All right.

The world is crying out for a middle-aged technology critic rapper.

10% of their ad revenue is ads for scams by their own internal accounting.

So let me say that I don't think competition is a good unto itself.

And I think it is absolutely possible to compete to become the world's most efficient human rights violator.

The reason I like competition is because it makes firms into a rabble instead of a cartel.

So in 2022, two teenagers...

Reverse-engineered Instagram.